A Handbook to Help You
Find Your Passion – and Get a Life

If you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, take a couple seconds to complete this quick quiz:

Are you doing EXACTLY the kind of work that makes you want to leap out of bed each morning excited to begin a new day?

Does your work satisfy a need deep within to express yourself, your talents, your values, your unique and precious gifts?

Does your work allow for a balanced life – one that leaves time for family and friends, for exercise or hobbies, for you?

Are you doing what you love and loving what you do?

If you answered “yes” to all of these questions, congratulations! There’s a good chance that you have achieved what the Buddhist’s call “Right Livelihood.”

If you haven’t yet found the work you were meant to do, keep reading. You’re about to Find Your Calling – and when you find that calling that is uniquely yours, your life will be transformed. Guaranteed.

“The way to find out about your happiness,” said renowned mythology scholar Joseph Campbell, “is to keep your mind on those moments when you feel most happy, when you are really happy – not excited, not just thrilled, but deeply happy.”

Read that paragraph again. It’s awesome.

Now ask yourself how you feel each day as you get ready for work. It probably sounds something like this.

Your alarm clock buzzes you awake. You drag yourself out of bed, dreading another day at a job that’s high on stress and short on satisfaction.

I guess what I’m asking you is this:

Are You Truly Happy Working in a Career That’s Fulfilling and Enjoyable?

Because when you really love your work you greet the day like this:

You don’t need an alarm clock because you can’t wait to get out of bed and dive into another workday where your work feels more like play.

Nonsense. The 19th century writer George Eliot got it right when she said, “You’re never too old to be what you might have been.”

Beverly Goodman Park from Northampton, Massachusetts is a perfect example of what I’m talking about:

Beverly was close to 60 when her marriage ended. At an age when most people are contemplating retirement, Beverly decided to pursue a long-held dream of becoming an attorney. A lot of people told her she was too old. Undaunted, Beverly went to law school while working full-time, passed the bar exam, and at 61, landed a job at a law firm, explaining, “I thought this age stuff was baloney.”

So, as you see, just because you’re all grown up, it doesn’t mean you can’t find your own life mission and live it.

But this leads me to my next question…

How Do You Find Work That Will Feed Your Soul?

When you discover your Calling, you may find your life taking you in unexpected directions.

So here’s your million-dollar question:

Do you believe you were put on this earth to sit in commuter traffic, to suffer through the performance evaluations and reorganizations, to have to answer to a boss that is well… you know….

Were you really created to spend your life having the Sunday night blues?

Or Do You Believe, As I Do, That You Were Put Here to Follow a Calling That Is Uniquely Yours?

Loved the Book!

I have parted with perfectly good coin to read the wisdom of many different authors concerning what I should do with my life and career. They all offer platitudes, exercises, and encouragement to the seeker. Some have complex diagrams, case studies, whatever. Chicken Soup for the aimless. Let me assure you, this book is different. It is clearly written, extremely useful, and the surprise is that it is inspirational! Not only will you (probably) get some great ideas to help you break out of that rut, but you’ll enjoy the process, and almost certainly be in a better mood just from reading the book! I didn’t get that from any of the ‘what color is my jumpsuit’ books, which gather dust on my shelf. Believe it or not, I carry this book around in my briefcase! I show it to friends, suggest they buy it, loan it to them if they won’t buy it. You should buy it–try it, and you’ll probably love it. If you read it and don’t think it’s a life-changer, give it to a close friend and they will thank you for it. Loved the book, by the way!~ Steve Cobb

If the idea of loving what you do appeals to you, the way I see it… here are your options: You can keep plodding along week after week hoping that inspiration will somehow, someway suddenly strike and – in a flash – your calling will be revealed.

Or, you can make a promise to yourself right here, right now to take the first bold step on behalf of your dreams.

This is where Changing Course comes in….

By the way, in case you don’t know me, I’m Valerie Young, the “Dreamer in Residence” here at Changing Course. It’s been nine years since I abandoned my corporate cubicle and my 90-mile-day commute to launch Changing Course.

Today I am doing work and living a life I love. And I want you to too.

That’s why I went out and pooled together some of the best and the brightest career change experts around to create It’s Never Too Late to Find Your Calling.

Experts like Barbara Sher, Barbara Winter, Patrick Combs, and Nicholas Lore, have generously allowed me to share with you excerpts, exercises, and techniques from their thought-provoking books. Through their collective wisdom, experience, and know-how you’ll get to benefit from their step-by-step approach to uncovering your gifts, your passion, your real calling.

Simply stated, It’s Never Too Late to Find Your Calling will help you discover the work you were born to do.

Barbara Sher, author of five best-selling books including I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was explores the notion that “Life isn’t short… it’s wide.” This is where you find out why all those people who insist that you have to settle on just one calling don’t know what they’re talking about! Instead Barbara will show you how you can have them all!

Barbara’s sage and easy to follow advice makes It’s Never Too Late to Find Your Calling an unexpected treasure. But that’s just the beginning. Seminar leader, enthusiastic advocate of self-bossing, and author of Making a Living Without a Job, Barbara Winter shares her winning ways for finding your lost passion. And later she tells you the one thing you absolutely MUST focus on if you want to Find Your Calling.

This book offers wise advice.

After many years, many tests, and many registration fees to obtain my Professinal License, I found myself in a great job that I just hated. I did not “fit” into their social culture and I found my brain just worked differently than others in my Profession. What to do? I had reached the big 50 age bracket and was feeling despondent over making any kind of a job change. After all, I had invested a great deal of time and effort into this career. Was it time to quit or to work part-time?

Keeping an open mind, I started reading Valerie Young’s book. This book offers wise advice and the contributions of several experts in the field, but it was the worksheets that made the difference. Once I opened up the word processor, followed her directives and poured my heart out into black & white text, well, it all made sense. I was able to analyze and understand myself, from the child through adult, including my dreams, creativity and rewarding experiences. Valerie has provided a forum to allow you to quiet the beast of negative voices in your head and to design the next phase of your life. Be sure to do the worksheets! Thank you, Valerie, for the tools that inspire me into my next phase of life. I now have a clear insight into how to phase-out of my full-time profession and to phase-into work that is more suited to my natural talents.~ J McAndrews

A truly practical book.

I am finding this book to be not only inspirational but helpful in a concrete way. Each author has a different experience of finding their calling and achieving success, so it will be useful to a great many people. I highly recommend doing the exercises, rather than just reading the book, because that is where you will get your “light bulb” moments, finding insights into your own desires and stumbling blocks. This is a truly practical book for those of us dreamers who need a guide on the road.~ Elizabeth D

I Wanted It’s Never Too Late to Find Your Calling To Work For Anyone Who Dreams of a More Meaningful And Balanced Life Doing Work They Truly Love

So I went out and found even MORE experts, perspectives, and voices. People like…

Popular speaker and author Patrick Combs will share his “Super-Simple, Unique & Weird Job Idea Generator.” Use it and you’ll never even think about taking another “McJob” again!

Author and teacher Barbara Blossom’s practical essay, “How to Redesign Your Life One Step at a Time” reveals every step she took to find her calling – and how you can too.

Naturally you’ll hear from me too. I’ll share my “10 Ways to Hear Your Calling.” With so many strategies to draw from you’ll quickly see just how easy it can be to tap into even long-forgotten passions.

And if you worry that the thing you most love to do won’t pay the bills, think again! Once you discover the utterly liberating concept of multiple streams of income you’ll realize that more is possible than you ever imagined. Plus I’ll show you how one income-generating idea leads to another!

It’s Never Too Late to Find Your Calling is so jammed-pack full of immediately useful information that it’s almost impossible to pass on to you the essence of this unique manual on one simple web page.

Order your fully downloadable eBook now for just $19.95 and instantly discover for yourself that It’s Never Too Late to Find Your Calling

This is a great book for individuals looking for alternative professions.

For most of my life adult life I have tried to work a “real job”, but I never felt comfortable in the corporate world and I never fit in. Valerie Young’s book “Finding Your True Calling …” has inspire me to follow my dreams and believe in my ideas AND it has reminded me that it’s okay NOT to fit in and there is more to life then the corporate world. The book is an interesting read with contributions from many authors who followed their dreams. It also incorporates career counseling/lifestyle activities that focus on what you love to do OR what you love in life and then helps you transform these loves into alternative job ideas. This is a great book for individuals looking for alternative professions and I highly recommend it.~ NJ

From the Blog

Praise

A New Direction

I decided to take the Work @ What You Love Workshop and also work one-on-one with Valerie. The workshop explored so many unusual and unexpected solutions to my specific questions. I made so many new connections to what clearly works for me in crea...